Turn air pump off at night ?

C

craigster

AC Members
Sep 7, 2003
10
0
0
Sydney, Australia
Visit site
We are just in the process of stocking our newbie tank (45 litre / 10g, octagonal 30cm x 30cm x 45 cm tall).

Now (week 2) we have 11 new children:
- 4 x neons; initially a bit skittish but now too happy to school
- 2 x cardinal tetras, happy with the neons, though 1 is inclined to his 'quiet time' alone
- 2 x glowlights, F+M (will need more F's if she's going to get any rest)
- 3 x otocinclus, quite mad

We are in debate at the moment over what else might be compatible if we add a male betta, but thats another story!

Tank info etc included below, but my question relates to this: we have an air pump which I've buried under the gravel substrate. Whats the general wisdom on turning it off during the night to calm the tank down ? I've also read that constant air flow can "push" the CO2 out of the water, making life for the plants hard, and they are looking a little yellow.

Right now we leave the air pump, located to the side of the aquarium, on 24/7. Sometimes however, the residents can be very skittish even well, well before sunrise (haven't checked in the middle of the night) and spend 3 or 4 hours in the morning darting around madly everywhere before they calm down. Admittedly, this was worst in their initial fews days home, and may have also been caused by the LFS having an earlier dayly routine so our fish were just adjusting to our light cycle, which runs to 11pm lights out. But their behaviour got me thinking. What do others do ?



Our aquarium
("tank" is such a functional word!)

45 litre / 10g, octagonal 30cm x 30cm x 45 cm tall
Our little beiginners book 1 has server us very well. Despite the excitement, we patiently followed the prepration instructions, used small riverstone substrate (mostly light coloured), added 5 plants of various leaf types and sizes incl one growing on our purchased tree root. Filled with tap water and turned it all on. Woke up to moderately cloudy white water on day 2, had clear water again by end of day 3 and off to LFS on day 8. I now know this to be cycling, probably applying to both the tank water and the trips to the LFS! Water is ph6.9-7 so far. LFS tested the water for ammonium (no trace) and nitrites (fine) though my partner oversaw this while I went gah gah over their fishies. Just goes to show it can go smoothly! :cool: If anything, all this was pretty fast by some people's experience.

We have a seemingly good external filter (600 liters/hr), 75w heater, 25cm aquarium fluro light (unknown spectrum, was display stock and with the tank depth I think we may need a 2nd in a diff spectrum as some of the plants a little washed out).


1: Tropical Fish, a complete pet owners manual (English ed 1991) by Peter Stadelmann. ISBN 0-8120-4700-1 German title Das Aquarium 1990 Great book; recommend it to any beginner.
 
Congratulations on your new tank!! :)

Ive not heard of burying the airstone in the substrate before but if it does not obstruct the air flow there should be no problem.

As to your question, there is no need to turn it off. The fish are skittish cause they are skittish fish. They will settle down a bit as they relax into the tank. Saying that though, what is the rating of the pump you have on the airstone? it could be causing a problem if it is very powerful.

About the plants -
where did you get them?
what types do you have?
do you have any kind of fertilizer?

some aquarium plants have very specialized needs, mostly to do with lighting. (which can be horribly expensive!)

Also, I dont think you have cycled your tank yet Im afraid. It cannot cycle until there is a source of ammonia in the tank. (If you did add ammonia please forgive me i could not see a mention of it in your post). If you didnt then dont worry! the fish you purchased are not poop machines like some you could have purchased are. You need to start checking your water everday for ammonia, nitrates and nitrites. If you get any indicator that the levels are rising you need to start doing 20% water changes. For a fishy cycle it is usually the best for your fish to do a water change like this everyday.

It is great to see someone so enthusiastic about the hobby, I may have told you a little more than you wanted to know but dont let it get you down!! once you get the hang of looking after your fish it all becomes much simpler...then you can move onto harder fish! :D
good luck and I hope i helped
 
DS is right--your tank is not cycled. A quick definition may be helpful here, since there are different uses of the word.

Cycling as referred to here means the establishment of the bacteria which process waste--ammonia, for starters. These bacteria break ammonia down, and nitrites are their waste product. Another set of bacteria consume the nitrite, resulting in nitrates. The nitrates are removed in regular water changes, or consumed by plants. The size of the bacteria beds is based on the food source--more fish = more waste = more bacteria. So, cycling is an ongoing process as the bio-load (amount of waste) in your tank changes. Additional fish, and the fish maturing, will all impact the size of the bacteria beds.

That said--you need to monitor the tank, because ammonia and nitrites will show up. They are very toxic to fish, and harm and kill fish. Lots of water changes to keep ammonia <1 and nitrites <.5 will help, as will the plants.

For the plants--you'll need to determine what kind of plants you have, and see if you're providing them with enough light. Also--verify that they are true aquatic plants. Often, terrestrial plants are sold as aquatic, and they do not survive.

For the air pump--you can remove it entirely. Your filter will provide adequate surface agitation to encourage the exchange of gases at the surface (putting more 02 in the water). Air stones are useful if you're medicating the tank, if the temperature is very high, in cases where there is little surface agitation, or in non-planted tanks. Turning it off for the night won't help--if anything, the evening is when the tank needs more surface agitation, since the plants begin using oxygen when the lights go off.
 
Thanks demon_surfer. Appreciate the help. Seem's we're being less patient than we thought (funny that...)

The air pump is not an airstone (but I may be a bit confused), its just a tube with a small 'bubble dispering' sponge on the end. Its called an Eterna Junior pump - sadly, not sure of rating. Buried partly for the look as the sponge material is bright blue and partly because this made bubbles seem suitably subdued (based solely on a few other setups I've seen).

For the plants, we've been using SERA Florenette A in the gravel by the roots of each one, one tablet/week each. Other than a general idea that diversity was probably good, plants were selected based on visuals only. We turn out to have

- fanwort (or similar)
- anubias barteri (I think) attached to the tree root
- a rush-like/corkscrew/cryptocoryne,
- a larger, broad leaf plant like echinodorus
- about 2 doz strands of a plant with dense small flat round leaves, bit like bacop monierri (but probably not as ours is denser)

All appearing to grow new leaves quickly but original leaves on first 3 plants either died or yellowed. Hoping new growth will outstrip mortality (I often hope that!). I think I need to research their exact types and needs better.

I should have said that on initial water fill we also added SERA Aqutan and Nitrivec per dosage instructions. This was partners job so it didn't stick in my mind! Ditto for new water 24 hrs before adding to aquarium on a 20% weekly change (so far). I've gone back and read bottles - they target speeding the ammonium/nitrite cycle but I'm on alert now, just in case. I'll get a test kit and slow down on adding more fishies so none of us gets more stressed!

Thanks again. I must take some pix of it all, but I still use that 20th century stuff called film so it may take a while :)
 
Thanks OrionGirl, all invaluable.

I confess I like the bubbles, and during the day, so do the fish. Possibly at night too.

One note though - I seem to recall a high school chemistry experiment wh demonstrated that (terrestrial) plants photosynthesize only in sunlight, but process C02 day and night. Of course, that was 25 years ago and it hadn't come up again till now ...
 
Im glad your still enthusisatic! Dont worry about being a little impatient...everybody did it when they started out..and then when they learned better they did it anyway! :)

Ive used products like those you mentioned before ( I used one called cycle) it is best to use them carefully as most of them can provide little proof that they actually do anything!

as to the test kit, if you can get one of the test strip types (much easier and quicker for the amount of testing you are going to need to be doing till your cycle is over)

just to clarify, these tests are a box of strips, you dip one into your tank it it will give you a reading from the tank. I dont know any brand names im afraid maybe OG can provide some. i suggest these cause i used one of the test tube test kits when I was cycling and these things are a pain in the *** to use every day! :D

:
 
Photsynthesis takes place during the day, and oxygen is a bi-product...However, plants do require oxygen in order to function. At night, plants are not producing oxygen, but are using it. For more than you ever wanted to know: http://www.life.uiuc.edu/govindjee/paper/gov.html The amount of oxygen plants use is prety spare, but should not be ignored.

In open environments, and abundance of plants is a serious problem, because the dead plant matter is not removed. The bacteria and micro-organisms that feed on the dead plant matter can actually use so much oxygen that the water becomes oxygen depleted, and this can kill fish and other aquatic animals. In our closed systems, the dead material is cleane dout manually, so this aspect is not as serious of a concern.

I actually prefer the liquid test tube kits--they are easier to use for me, and I am not familiar with and of the strip kits--sorry!
 
surface area

With a tall tank, you need to be very aware of the lack of swimming room for the fish.

Even with small fish, and you need to stay with 1" fish as much as possible, you will not be able to carry many in the tank due to the short sides of an octagon.

The otos will be fine, they don't swim that much. Not so sure about the others.

As for the one hiding in the back, keep an eye on it, might be sick. If it is really having trouble, unable to swim or something, remove it from the tank. As it dies it can release a lot of bad bacteria to the tank. Best to get a sick fish oout before that happens if possible. you can put it into a large bucket with lots of fresh dechlorinated water and the airstone and se it that helps. Probably won't though.
 
Just to add to the airstone idea---

I have airstones in 15 of my over 18 tanks setup and I bury all of them under the rocks to make the tank look more natural looking. Also, this seems to make the bubbles bigger and less powerful as to not mess up the fish's swimming/eating/sleeping patterns. I also always hide the tubing for the airstones under rocks and then behind tall (full) plants...this seems to work well for me anyway.
 
Well, on the other side of that coin I have zero airstones in my two dozen tanks, and have not used any in decades. IMHO and IME they are pure ornamant (other than blowing off the CO2 which the plants need) in any tank with adequate filtration. I like the plants a lot better than the noise.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom